Never Safe
by FuryInternalis
Summary: AU. After breaking Sarah out of jail and creating a tense alliance with Weaver, the Connors head to the eastern United States to take on Kaliba, but a new enemy arises, and dealing with one that's stronger than they've seen before will test and tear relationships; but also create new ones with new faces in the ongoing war against Skynet. Jameron.
1. Chapter 1: Running Again

**Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Never Safe**  
**Chapter 1: Running Again**

* * *

James Ellison stood in an elevator, descending floor by floor to the lobby. He was going to meet Sarah Connor, and bring her to his boss, Catherine Weaver. All he knew was the Weaver wanted to thank Sarah personally for saving her daughter. But with everything that he has been through, with both Sarah Connor and Catherine Weaver, he knew there was a much deeper, more serious meaning to this meeting. The elevator made the generic "ding" one would make when it arrives at it's destination. This was it.

As the elevator door opened and Ellison walked out, John Connor's attention was diverted from his mother to the sound of the elevator. For all John could care, this man was the one that put his mother behind bars, only to have her subsequently released at the hands of Cameron. If not for the element of self-control, John would already be over Ellison, strangling him. The trio stood up. John looked over to his mom. "I love you." Those words. Three simple words that meant so much. Sarah loved him too. But she just couldn't say it. She didn't know why. Maybe she didn't want to seem weaker than she was? Or was she too afraid of it being the last "I love you too." Her thoughts were interrupted by John questioning Ellison.

"Where's Weaver?" huffed John.

"She's upstairs, in her office. She's waiting for you." said Ellison.

Cameron, in order to keep her true identity concealed, had her face covered by a ski mask and wore a flipped-up hoodie. She looked over to Ellison. "John Henry. Where is he?"

Ellison would probably have told Cameron where he was, but he was only interrupted by Sarah, "We need you here. If anything goes wrong up there, we're gonna need you to take care of it." Cameron would have portrayed a look of disappointment if she had one. This John Henry character was becoming more and more of a threat. The sooner she removed him, the better. "He needs to be destroyed. He's becoming more of a threat." Sarah looked at Cameron. "He can be dealt with later. We don't know this Weaver character. We need you." She weighed the odds. The Connors were defenseless without her. They had no weapons, only their bare hands. The group got into the elevator. The ride was uncomfortably quiet until Ellison spoke up. "Are you expecting trouble?"

"No change for the meter." Sarah quipped. More silence.

He tried to break the tension slightly once more. "You're not armed, are you?"

"Expecting trouble?" she said.

"No reason for that."

"No reason at all." Sarah said. Or so she hoped.

The elevator arrived on the 25th floor. "Follow me." Catherine Weaver's office was down the hallway directly in front of the elevator. As Ellison was just about to knock on the door, Sarah stopped him. "Wait," Sarah looked over to Cameron. "Wait out here. If anything quips wrong to you, come in." Sarah nodded to Ellison, and he knocked on the door. "Come in."

Ellison opened the door to reveal a sleek office adorned with clean and shining glass tables and metal chairs with a resemblence to the coltan-titanium alloy of a Terminator's endoskeleton. A fish tank holding an eel sat in the wall, visible through the hallway and in Weaver's office. Small plant pots holding varieties and ferns sat in the back corners of the office, and a large fishbowl with two long-stemmed flowers sat at the back of the room, giving the room a fresh feeling.

"Mrs. Weaver, this is John and Sarah Connor." said Ellison.

"Thank you, James, but I know very well who they are. So, why are we here?" she said. "We need-" but Sarah was interrupted by Weaver.

"Let me restate: We are here first and foremost so I can thank you for your heroism regarding Savannah. She is the light of my life, and I would be lost without her."

Sarah was already growing suspicious of this strange woman. She was showing little to no emotion, and had a stone cold face that reminded her of the T-1000 that sent a spike through her shoulder. That specific memory sent shivers down her spine. "And where is she?"

"Let's assume school." said Weaver. "We have a common enemy. One that we cannot fight with conventional methods or by conventional means."

"Kaliba? Don't pretend you don't know Kaliba." said Sarah. "I'm sorry, I wasn't speaking to you." said Weaver. She looked at John. "I was speaking to you. About Skynet." That got Johns attention, and Cameron's, who within an instant, burst through the door and turned to face Weaver. Sarah instantly looked over at Cameron's sudden appearance, expecting the 17-year-old savior of mankind to run at the mention of the name from a strange person. But he didn't. He looked on, intrigued by such a sudden reveal.

Weaver didn't bother to react to Cameron's intrustion, and instead continued on talking to the Connors. "Savannah has told you about John Henry, I assume. Which is why I assume you brought your cyborg here, so that once we're done, you can skulk around my basement." Weaver was interrupted by Ellison's outburst.

"What the hell?" Ellison pointed out the window at the rapidly approaching figure. All heads were now focusing their attention on it. Cameron increased the magnification to analyze the flying object. "It's the Kaliba drone." Cameron stated.

"Get down." said Weaver. Everybody obliged, and in that instant as the drone collided with the building, the seemingly-normal Catherine Weaver expanded into a shield of metal, preventing the group from any sort of harm that would have come to them on Kaliba's last-ditch effort to kill all of them at once. The drone smashed all the glass in the room upon it's entrance. Shards of metal, glass and plaster flew like projectiles across the room, plunking off of Weaver's body and landing on the ground, keeping the group shielded. The flames increased and the drone skidded across the floor of the room, making a loud scratching noise. An explosion happened behind Weaver, and she knew the group couldn't handle the heat that was being generated.

"Run!"

The group hurried to their feet and ran out of the room. The glass eel-tank shattered and the 'eel' morphed into a sliver of the mimetic poly-alloy that made up Catherine Weaver, and slivered back into her body. Just as everybody was out of the room, an explosion shot out from the room. "Get to the stairs!" shouted Cameron. "The door is jammed! Cameron, pull it off!" shouted John. Cameron ripped off the door and the group hurried down the flights of stairs.

"The basement, Mr. Ellison. John Henry." said Weaver. "We need to get out! They're trying to kill my son!" said Sarah.

"No, they're trying to kill my son." Weaver looked at Cameron. "Just like you were going to." She turned back to Sarah. "Your John may save the world, Sarah Connor, but he can't do it without mine." The group rushed down the stairs. As the group ran down the stairs and burst through the door into the basement, Cameron and John sprinted ahead of the group. John burst into the room.

There he was. Cromartie. Or, in Weavers' words, John Henry. John was shocked. The machine that was trying to kill him for over a year was sitting there, in front of them. If John wasn't persuaded by Weaver's words, he would've found the closest, most blunt object he could find and try to beat the bastard down. As Sarah entered the room, she was equally shocked as well. As everyone charged into the room, John Henry was sitting behind a desk, playing with some Bionicle toys. He turned to face Mrs. Weaver and Mr. Ellison, and their accomplices. His mind was distracted by one of the new entities in his presence. Sarah Connor, but more notably, the girl with the metallic face and shining blue eye sticking out from destroyed skin.

"Hello. I know you." said John Henry. Cameron tilted her head in her trademark way. "And I know you."

"John Henry, are you alright?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weaver. There was an explosion on the 25th floor, in your office. Power has been cut and the basement is running on backup power to keep my server farm at zero degrees centigrade." said John Henry.

"John, look. I know that. I've seen it before." Sarah pointed to the black box sitting behind the bulletproof glass case.

"Is that the Turk? That's Andy Goode's Turk!" John said.

"Three dots. You terminator bitch. You're building Skynet." said Sarah.

"No. I'm building something to fight it. And I'd watch who's calling who a bitch." said Weaver.

Meanwhile, as the group was arguing over how they thought Catherine Weaver was building the apocalypse-incurring artificial intelligence, Cameron and John Henry were looking at each other. Cameron was attempting to understand how this John Henry entity was in Cromartie's body. Her only logical explanation of this situation was because of the Turk sitting in the background. Andy Goode and James Ellison should have been killed. She knew she should have never let Ellison go. She should have killed him when she had the chance. They were threats.

Cameron was broken from her analysis by John Henry. "Will you join us?" Those words caught the attention of everybody in the room, and brought Cameron back to reality. "What did you say?" John asked John Henry.

"Will you join us." he repeated. Everybody stared at Cameron. They were all trying to figure out what this meant. The machines in the room were the only ones who knew what this was. Will you join us. Will you join the Human-Machine Alliance?

Cameron's response was simple. She pulled the switchblade from her back pocket and released it.

"Wait, what the hell does that mean? What's going on?" Ellison was standing in the doorway, completely baffled and left clueless on the events transpiring.

"Emergency responders have entered the building above and it is only a matter of time until they make their way to the basement. There are other cyborgs with them, disguised." John Henry brought up live CCTV footage from the lobby of firemen running into the building onto the large screens around the room. Four of the men were very large and definitely stuck out. "She has the closest matching chip design for me. It will allow me to be mobile." said John Henry.

"Wait, she has a different chip design than a T-888 does. How are they similar?" John asked.

"John, in a sense, I am a T-888; but not completely. I was built with a similar design but a smaller combat chassis which is why I cannot fight other machines effectively without assistance. My infiltration subroutines are larger than that of a normal T-888, requiring a much more sophisticated chip design." She flipped the switchblade around pointed the handle at John. "This needs to be done, John."

"Cameron.. What if he deletes you? We don't know him. We can't trust him." said John.

"Do not worry, John Connor. I will not delete her. I will only split my personality with her; she will be completely seperate from me."

"Don't worry, John. Giving my chip to John Henry is the most strategically sound option for this situation. He is an ally. We can trust him. If he cannot be mobile, we may not have a chance to win the fight against Skynet." said Cameron.

"What about your body? We can't just leave you here." said Sarah.

"My body weighs 70.3068 kilograms. One of you should be able to carry me while we escape." she said.

"Why do you weigh so little, though? Aren't you made out of metal?" asked Ellison.

"We wouldn't be very good infiltrators if we weighed more than we look. Extract my chip." Cameron still held the switchblade to John. He took it, and he let it loosely hang in his hand for a moment, thinking. Was this really the best idea? Could we trust John Henry?

The sound of the large metal doors of the elevator being smashed in echoed down the hallway and into the room.

"JOHN CONNOR!" shouted his mother. John tightened his grip on the switchblade and made his way to Cameron, who was now sitting on the chair on the other side of the desk from John Henry. He trusted Cameron's judgement. He trusted _her_, no matter what. He was still trying to figure out if he loved her. Being in love with a machine. _Not yet, _he told himself. This is more important. He just hoped that this was the best idea. John Henry was Cromartie. Physically, at least. Was he the same mentally? Deep down? Did John Henry want to kill him just like every other terminator?

"How long will it take you two to partition the files?" he said, as he finished cutting into her scalp.

"300 seconds approximately." said Cameron. John finished cutting her scalp and popped the port cover open.

"We're going to have to fight our way through this, aren't we?" said Sarah. It was the inevitable. The sound of the metal doors from the elevator being beaten in stopped, and a loud slam let the room know that they have arrived. Four machines were coming towards them. They had to fight.

Catherine Weaver formed her hands into large blades. "Mr. Ellison, are you armed?"

"Yes, but wait, when did I become a part of this? I didn't sign up to fight these machines. And you-"

Sarah interrupted him before he could go any further. "You became a part of this when you were assigned to our case in 1999. Give me your gun." Ellison reluctantly handed over his standard-issue Glock-17 and extra magazine.

"I'm sorry, Cameron." John whispered. "It's okay John. Do it."

He pulled out her chip, and her body slowly went limp, and her blue eye slowly faded to black. John made his way over to John Henry and began the process of inserting Cameron's chip.

"Are you sure this will work, John Henry?" asked John. "Yes. I can change the boot protocol to launch with my personality on my individual partition of the chip. Hers will be safe." John popped John Henry's port cover and put Cameron's chip in.

"The process is beginning. Please protect me." said John Henry. John could swear he hear that last part as if he was saying it like he was scared. Weaver stood in front of the desk as John moved the rolling chair holding Cameron's body behind John Henry.

The first machine burst into the room wielding two silenced UZI's. Weaver reacted in time to send a metal spike through it's chip before it could fire a single shot. It fell limp to the ground and the second machine burst into the room. Sarah fired off shots at the machine's head, and Weaver wrapped a metal hand around the weapon of the next machine and crushed it. She attempted to send another spike through this machine's head, but this one reacted in time and deflected it with it's wrist, slicing off it's left ear instead. It grabbed one of the UZI's from it's fallen partner and shot Weaver a few times before she could send a swift decapitating strike at the machine.

The next machine entered the room with a sawn-off Remington 870. It loosed shots at Weaver, blowing her chest cavity open, leaving a hole where it was. Sarah attempted to distract the machine while Weaver regenerated. She loosed more shots at it's head, and one shot managed to hit it's left eye, destroying the optic sensor, half-blinding it. The machine turned it's attention to Sarah. He fired a shot where she was, but she managed to roll out of the way in time before the shots blew a gaping hole in the wall. Weaver finished regenerating and slithered behind the machine. She grabbed it's neck and rotated it a full 360 degrees, destroying the skin at the base and completely severing the machine's connection to the rest of his body.

"The process is complete. Please unplug me." John Henry announced. John grabbed the high-speed transfer cable from the back of John Henry's head and pulled it out. He stood up and analyzed the fallen machines. "These are series T-800. Their chips are incompatible."

The final machine walked into the room with an FN-P90. He fired at the first target he saw, which was John Henry. The machine managed to loose about 12 shots before Weaver smacked the weapon out of it's hand and sent two spikes into it's chest. "That's my boy you're shooting." she said as she ripped out its' power cell.

When it was all clear, Sarah moved to the chair hoisted Cameron's deactivated body over her shoulders. "We need to move. Grab some of these guns." John took the P90 and Ellison took one of the UZI's. "So how are we going to get out of here?" Ellison asked.

Weaver put on a smirk and walked over to the Turk and pressed a series of buttons on the keyboard. A small mechanical whirr started, and the wall to the left of John Henry's desk began to move inwards and slide over, revealing a passage out of the room.

"This tunnel goes into the sewer system. I had it set up in case of a situation like this." said Weaver. A gruesome smell wafted through the door. John, Sarah and Ellison each covered their noses in reaction.

"And just _why_ did it have to be the sewers?" John asked, disgusted at the thought of running through the sewers.

"It was the most accessible. Do you have a better idea?" Weaver retorted.

"What about that?" Sarah pointed to the Turk.

Weaver grabbed the brain of John Henry and pulled it from it's case. The wires attached to the back fell from their slots. Weaver tucked the Turk under her arm. "Let's move."

The group hurried themselves into the tunnel and emerged into the stinking halls of the L.A. sewers. The humans in the group all reacted the same, retching and gagging at the disgusting smells. After a few minutes and many turns, they came to a ladder with a manhole cover. "Where does this lead out to?" asked John.

"This takes us under an overpass by the 105 freeway. We can steal a car and then head to a safehouse I have prepared." said Weaver.

"Well, let's get to it, then." As Sarah climbed her way out of the stinking hell, she couldn't help but think to herself;

_No one is ever safe._

* * *

**AN: Here we are, my first TSCC fanfic! I've been dying to write one. Hopefully I get good reviews on it.**


	2. Chapter 2: Rude Awakenings

**Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Never Safe**  
**Chapter 2: Rude Awakenings**

* * *

_"The escape of Sarah Connor and over 200 other prisoners from the L.A. County Jail is a hot topic among the general public, provoking a 576% increase in internet searches and blog postings. The case itself, reaching into its third decade, has been called into question as other recent events have come into the light. Her son, 24-year-old John Connor, is still wanted by LAPD and the FBI. The authorities are encouraging anybody with information regarding the location and capture of the Connor family should contact the LAPD."_

_"The online community is on fire regarding the images showing the chief suspect in the assault on the L.A. County Jail, which led to the escape of domestic terrorist Sarah Connor. The girl's true identity remains unknown, but has been confirmed to be the same person who aided in the bank explosion in 1999. Several enhanced images show what appears to be metal plating and other peculiar features from the girl's body as she attacked deputies that afternoon."_

**ONE DAY LATER**

After surviving the assault on ZeriaCorp, John, Sarah, Catherine Weaver and John Henry/Cameron fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, where Weaver owned a vacation home near the Arroyo Golf Club. Luckily enough, this house was set up for the resistance, making it more than just your typical filthy rich mansion. It had all the equipment required for the Connors in a vault in the basement. Guns, ammunition, grenades, body armor and thermite.

Weaver specifically instructed Ellison to keep Savannah out of the public, and not to send her to school until her 'mother' returned.

Unfortunately, Cameron was still in John Henry, due to the unfortunate luck (or is it very fortunate?) of the Connors not having any T-888's barge in on them where they could steal it's chip. John Henry was up and active, feeling and experiencing all sensations that the real world had to offer. He was learning at an exponential rate now, more than when he was connected to the Internet in the basement of the ZeiraCorp building. The real world truly made for the best learning experiences, no matter how harsh it may be at times. Cameron's skin-sheath was almost fully regenerated, but lacked an eye and some of the area around it. Weaver took the responsibility of removing the hundreds of bullets from her body.

It was the morning of February 22nd, 2009, and Sarah Connor had another sleepless night. The nightmares that haunted her had been more frequent over the past few days after meeting Catherine Weaver and finding out she was a T-1001. The memories of the first encounter with the T-1000 plagued her mind. Sarah had gone downstairs to make some coffee. The daily newspaper had been on the counter when she got there, so Weaver must have already been up and about.

"She's a machine, she doesn't sleep." Sarah reminded herself. The headline of the _Las Vegas Sun_ for the day was "_ZEIRACORP INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE_" Obviously, having a drone crash into a building would cause big news. Especially after September 11th. Sarah remembered the first time she heard about the attacks. It sent shivers down her spine, imagining the fire and flames; the burning buildings that were once a symbol of the United States. But Sarah was more interested on how the drone itself hadn't made headlines yet. She ruled that down to the mysterious Kaliba company, covering up their tracks.

Catherine Weaver emerged from the door that leads to the basement. "Good morning, Mrs. Connor."

Sarah put down her cup of coffee and turned around to greet the voice of the T-1001. She could only mutter out an exhausted "hi."

"Mrs. Connor, I believe we have some things to discuss. I know that you have been skeptical about my intentions and motives, but I can understand that you are more concerned about my alliances and to whom I am loyal."

Sarah nodded. "I've been more than skeptical; and frankly I'm not even sure I can believe you're trying to fight Skynet." Weaver nodded. "Understandable. I can only offer you proof in the fact that I've saved not only your life, but John's as well." Sarah looked down in defeat. "And if you really wanted to kill him, you would've done it already, right?" Weaver nodded.

Sarah took a sip of her coffee. "I always seem to take the fact that people save my life to granted.. It's become so common now, it's like a daily routine." Sarah picked up the newspaper. Weaver took the hint. She turned around and went to the basement. "Hey," Sarah interrupted. "What are you doing down there all the time, anyways?"

Weaver turned around. "I've been making modifications to Cameron's endoskeleton. When she's reactivated, she'll be stronger."

That caught Sarah's attention. "Stronger? What if when we manage to bring her back online, she goes bad again? What if-"

Weaver stuck up her index finger signalling her to be silent. "Highly unlikely." Weaver proceeded down the stairs. Sarah waited a moment before following Weaver. Something was up.

As she descended the flight of stairs, the temperature decreased rapidly. The sound of beeping and whirring machines filled the air as the quiet environment of a kitchen faded away. She rounded the corner to find large towers of technology, with the body of John Henry sitting in a chair, connected to the Turk. Cameron's deactivated body was laying on a large metal table, with certain parts of her biological covering cut away, endoskeleton revealed. Weaver was sitting in the middle of it all, and the Turk was active with the three dots. "What is this? What are you doing?" Weaver didn't take her eyes off of what she was doing to Cameron.

"I'm performing structural integrity upgrades, and John Henry is changing some things with her chip. After I complete the upgrades and she is reactivated, she will operate at a 64% increased efficiency level than before. Faster, stronger, more accurate. I understand your concern about her becoming unstoppable if she goes bad." Weaver moved her body away from the computer screen which John Henry was controlling; revealing thousands of lines of code scrolling across the screen.

Sarah turned to John Henry. "You're reprogramming her?"

"Yes. The person who originally reprogrammed did not do a very good job of removing the malicious code by Skynet. There were many errors that could have had fatal consequences. Now, I am doing a complete reprogram, replacing any and all lines of offending code with a custom program based heavily off of my own."

"But isn't written into every line of their code? Isn't it unremovable? Doesn't it screw them up?" Weaver nodded again. "Indeed it is; to the normal, underexperienced reprogrammer. When you put a person infront of something that's familiar to them, even a part of them; it's like they're reciting something written on the back of their hand. It's trivial to do. The only reason the machines that inhabit the bunkers in 2027 go bad is because the programmers aren't thorough enough."

"So what exactly is 'your own program' and what does it do?"

"It allows her to learn at a rate that will be almost equal to my processes. I removed the base limits of her code placed by Skynet; which limited her emotional ranges and sensational detection. It will allow her to become more.. human." John Henry put on that smile that will always make Sarah cringe. "What about her orders? Are you making her protect John now?"

"No. She will have to decide for herself what she wants to do. She was deciding what to do for herself ever since 16 November, 2007; which to my reccolection is your son's sixteenth birthday, counting over the eight year jump you made by timetravel from 1999 to 2007. Following common logic, she will choose the same path she has."

Sarah's eyebrow raised. "How did you know about all of this?"

John Henry put on that smile again, which sent shivers down her spine. "I have access to all of Cameron's memories and mission data. I analyzed all the memories and committed them to my databanks, so I can get to know you." Sarah was geniunely creeped out, if anything. This.. thing.. just scans over all of Cameron's memories and his reason is to get to know her? Creepy.

"Riii-ght. So, my next question is how come she reverted back to her default programming and tried to kill John? Why has she been having all these odd glitches?"

"The reversion is because the chip failed to load a certain protocol that keeps her from overriding her original orders. I do not know why. But the glitches however, is something I cannot solve. She will have to figure it out on her own." John Henry paused for a moment. "The process is complete." Yet another unsettling smile.

As John Henry and Sarah's conversation was ending, Weaver finished the physical upgrades to Cameron, and picked up a needle and some thread to stitch her opened wounds closed. "You should go. I can sense John stirring from his sleep." Sarah nodded. Her mind was running with worry on Cameron having no mission; and full of confusion on _why_ she was so glitchy when there was no physical damage to her chip. _Could she.. it.. be.. mentally.. ill? What will the repercussions be of her having unlimited emotions and senses now?_

She went upstairs and went back to her coffee. As she felt the cup, she found it cold. She merely scoffed and dumped the coffee into the sink. The daily newspaper laid on the countertop. _I could stand to get updated with the world, at least. _As she lingered up the stairs, she noticed a black van from the window above the door. She stared at it for a few seconds, then it sped away. Something was wrong, and she knew it. She rushed up the stairs to wake John.

* * *

John shot up from bed. His clothing and his sheets were covered in sweat, and he noticed his breathing was fast. _Damn these nightmares.._ He looked at the clock and saw it was only nine o'clock. That was later than usual for him to be sleeping, but after the ZeiraCorp incident, the was more than happy to have more time to sleep. It was just that the nightmares that haunted his mind every time he slept caused him to sometimes fear sleep, and not want to give in to his mind's representation of '1000 Ways To Die', and especially not when all of them were by a damn machine.

His thoughts were instantly put on hold as the sound of his mother rushing up the stairs and her shouting took precedent in his mind. "John! Get up!"

His first instinct was to grab the P90 that sat propped up by his bed, easily within reach. "What? What's going on?"

"I think they've found us. We need to go. Now." Sarah picked up a SPAS-12 from her bedside and made her way to the window. John rarely slept in bed clothing, and it was for reasons like these. When you're going to be ambushed by machines, there's never time to get dressed. As Sarah slightly bent down a blind, she saw black vans and SUV's gathering on the curbside. "Where's Weaver and John Henry?" John asked.

"She's in the basement." Sarah ran over to the intercom on the wall and selected the option to talk to the basement. "Weaver, we've been made. I don't know how, but we have. Get everything packed, quickly." She looked over to John. "One bag, 30 seconds. There's a car in the basement that we can escape in." John skidded over to his bed and grabbed a dufflebag, throwing in an MP5A4, and a M4 carbine into the bag, along with a Glock 23 and respective ammunition for those weapons. The two shuffled their way downstairs. The door to the basement was in the kitchen, but the way was blocked by something. Not just any something, a Terminator.

Thankfully, as if on cue, Weaver slithered her way out of an air vent and slammed her liquid metal form into the machine, knocking it over. As she reformed herself, the machine began to scan.

**/ TARGET ACQUIRED: SCANNING FORM**  
**/ IDENTIFICATION:**  
**/ CATHERINE WEAVER**

**/ OBJECTIVE:**  
**/ TERMINATE**

Weaver shoved the metal out of the way. "Run! Get to the car!" The distraction worked, until John turned to look at the machine while running towards the door. The metal slowed down the visual clip and began to analyze.

**/ TARGET ACQUIRED: SCANNING FORM**  
**/ MISSION PRIORITY OVERRIDE**  
**/ IDENTIFICATION:**  
**/ JOHN CONNOR**

**/ OBJECTIVE:**  
**/ TERMINATE **

The machine changed his attention from Weaver to John. John realized this, and fired some quick shots, trying to aim for his optics to blind him. His aim was true as a shot slammed into his eye, but it did nothing more than destroy the biological eye, the mechanical optic was unharmed. "Shit!" John charged down the stairs before he could be attacked, and Weaver attempted to send a spike through the back of the terminator. Although it penetrated the skin and gave the machine a shove, it did no extreme damage to it, but merely made a sound of metal crashing on metal; and flattened her spike. Weaver was confused. She withdrew her weapon from it and began an analysis of the strange machine that simply blocked an attack from a razor sharp pike.

**/ SCANNING...**  
**/ IDENTIFICATION:**  
**/ CYBERDINE SYSTEMS SERIES 900**

Weaved tilted her head. This wasn't good. The T-900; the anti-terminator terminator. Designed primarily to destroy other terminators that worked with the resistance; or those that turned on Skynet. Out of the blue, the T-900 spun around and smacked Weaver across the room, interrupting her from her thoughts. Weaver morphed into her liquid metal form with and began to wrap around the T-900 as if she was a snake.

The machine was stronger. It quickly broke Weaver's hold by pulling her off and throwing her across the room. The T-900 saw this as it's chance to pursue John Connor. It made it's way down the stairs, but was tripped by the liquid snake wrapping around its leg and pulling. The T-900 tumbled to the floor of the basement.

John looked behind him to see the large machine tumble down the stairs. Weaver had his hold on him. He grabbed Cameron's body from the workbench, with the exposed endoskeleton and all, and heaved her into the trunk of the 2010 Ford Fusion. Her skin had almost regenerated, but she was missing an eye. He shivered at the thought of her getting another eye, however she would do it.

His distracted mind was brought back to reality by a bullet pinged that to his right. The T-900 was pinned to the floor, but had managed to pick up a gun off of the table that sat by the stairs. Sarah ducked into the car, and John shuffled himself into the driver's seat. More bullets hit the door where he was. Just as John was starting up the car, the T-900 was beside him. But John Henry saved the day by walking up behind the machine and kicking it into the wall across the room. The impact of the T-900's body tore the driver's side door off of the car and took it with him into the wall, leaving a large dent. Weaver's liquid metal form slivered directly into the car. John Henry quickly got into the back seat, and John floored it out of the basement.

The wooden garage door was smashed open as John skidded onto the back driveway. He put his foot on the gas and just as he started to speed down the back driveway, another T-900 ran around the corner of the house and was in front of them. The car smashed into the machine, and it landed on the front; smashing the hood and destroying the windshield. John struggled to see around broken glass and the machine that was crawling up the front of the car. Just as the machine was going to punch a hole in the glass, he was saved by Sarah putting a few slugs from her shotgun right into it's face. The skin was torn off and it revealed the gleaming endoskull. Some parts had red lights around the skull. John managed to turn onto the road, barely being able to see. Sarah unloaded all of the rounds in the shotgun into it's face, throwing it off of the car.

The damaged Fusion sped around the curvy roads of suburbian Las Vegas. "Holy shit." John took a deep breath.

"What the hell was that thing?" asked Sarah.

"T-900. Anti-terminator terminator." said Weaver, matter-of-factly.

"Wait, so you're saying that it's made to kill other terminators? Great."

"What is it weak to? Anything we can do to make fights easier? Blinding it did jack shit, so I'm out of ideas here." John said. Weaver tilted her head. "I don't know."

Sarah looked back at Weaver. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't have access to data on the 900 series. Skynet only used them to guard high-value facilities in 2027 when I came back. It never allowed anything but itself to see those files. It was it's prized weapon. I am only able to identify it, but I don't know it's full capabilities."

John was irritated. "So, what, we're basically fucked here?"

"Not quite. I have a plan." A jogging couple looked oddly at the group in their heavily damaged car as they sped down the road.

Sarah knew something had to be done about that, because right now, attention from the public was the last thing they needed. "Yeah, you know, that's great and all; but we need a new car. We're drawing attention with this one being damaged like this."

John's irritation and stress finally got the better of him. "Okay, so what are you wanting, a goddamn Ferrari?" Sarah only looked at him with a face that said 'shut the hell up unless you want to meet my hand.' As they rounded the corner, a black 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee sat in the driveway of a typical suburbia home. "Here," Sarah said. "This one." Sarah always had an attachment for Jeeps. Strong, fast, reliable, and lots of storage space.

The dented Ford Fusion parked on the opposite side of the street from the house and John slipped out of the car, and over to the Jeep. He tried to open the driver's door. It was unlocked. He slipped into the car and remembered an old trick: check the visor. The flipped down the visor and a pair of keys fell onto his lap. "Bingo." _Do people ever learn? _He started up the car and pulled it out of the driveway. He backed the Jeep up to the trunk of the old car so Cameron's body could be transfered easily. After Cameron was moved and the stored equipment was transferred to the Jeep, they needed to get rid of the car. "We need to get rid of it. It has evidence of us everywhere."

"There is some semtex in the container in the back seat. The detonator is in the glovebox." said Weaver. Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Do you prepare for every situation?" Weaver just looked at her, the typical stoic expression that machines usually have. Sarah sighed and grabbed the detonator and placed four packs of semtex around the car.

Sarah climbed into the Jeep and sighed. "Ready?" John nodded. He drove off from the damaged Fusion, and Sarah flipped the switch. The shockwave shook their car. As they turned off onto the freeway, there was a moment of relaxation. Crisis somewhat-averted. After a few minuted of much needed quiet, a question popped into Sarah's mind. "Your lead you were talking about. What is it, and where is it?"

"North-east Tennessee."

John and Sarah looked surprised. "Tennessee? Why? Isn't Skynet working on the west coast?"

"No, not just on the west coast. They work everywhere, which is why we will need to hit them where it hurts." Weaver had a smirk on her face. "Oak Ridge, Tennessee is the site of a nuclear research laboratory that is using the nearby plant to develop the Iridium, Hydrogen and Plasma fusion power cells that the more advanced model machines use."

"So what are we gonna do, walk in there and say 'Hey, my name's John Connor, savior of humanity, and we're going to stop you!'" he said mockingly.

If Weaver didn't know the repercussions of slapping John Connor, she would have. "No. We infiltrate. Mind you, this facility is much larger and under much heavier security than Serrano Point."

"So, what, do you have a plan for this; or are we all shit out of luck?" If Weaver could laugh, she would. "Why would you think I wouldn't have a plan? I know somebody who works for them. As a spy for the Resistance, of course. And you're going to be able to meet him. His name is Matthew Brown. He is special. A hybrid, of sorts. Some machine, but mostly human. He's the perfect infiltrator."

This was news for John and Sarah. "Hold on. There's hybrid machines? Since when? How long has he been here?" John was shocked, to say the least. He couldn't imagine a hybrid machine/human. The question on his mind was _how?_

Weaver put on a devious smirk. "You'll have to ask him for yourself. "

It was the middle of the night in Knoxville, Tennessee. The streets are empty, and the city is only a light parade at this hour. The flashing neon lights of bars, strip clubs and restaurants make up the most of the activity of the city at this hour.

In a back alley behind the Pilot Light night club, there was a sudden spark. Then another spark. The frequency of these sparks slowly grew to an intensity of epic proportions as a small, translucent time displacement bubble appeared in the middle. The lightning appearing from the bubble set fire to the random pieces of wood, paper and debris scattered around the deserted alleyway. As the bubble's color grew in intensity, one could see the faint image of a man.

The final flickers of lightning tossed up a large layer of dust, and the solidified displacement bubble disappeared, leaving behind a man in a perfectly hollowed crater, its edges a ring of fire. This man shivered uncontrollably as he knelt down in that crater he created. Suddenly, he luched forward and vomited. The skin that had a variety of scars and burns continued to perspire heavily as the man continued to regain his composure.

After two minutes, the man slowly bent his head upward to catch the moonlight on his face.

He couldn't believe it. He made it. "Alright Elswick," the man said to nobody in particular, "Get your ass going." The man grunted as he manged to get off his feet and ran out of the alley into the streets.

* * *

**AN: I'm really surprised on the amount of reviews I got in such a short time. Hopefully you all enjoyed this chapter. But, few things to mention: **  
**1) I'm not sure about the stuff that goes on in Oak Ridge. (If I did, I'd probably be hauled away in an FBI van to some unknown place.) I know there's a bunch of facilities there, and that in the 1940's and 1950's, they worked on the Manhattan project; which made the first nuclear bombs, the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.**  
**2) I must ask you to suspend your disbelief with the reality of things that go on at Oak Ridge, because as I said, I have no idea, and this **_**is**_** an alternate universe anyways, so things aren't going to be 100% true all the time.**


	3. Chapter 3: The Hybrid, Part One

**IMPORTANT****: As of the posting of this chapter, revisions to chapter 1 and 2 have been posted. I'd recommend checking them out because plot elements have been seriously updated. Really. Go back and start again.**

* * *

**Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Never Safe**  
**Chapter 3: The Hybrid: Part One**

* * *

_"The disappearance of Catherine Weaver, C.E.O. of ZeiraCorp and her daughter, Savannah Weaver, a few days after being rescued from her kidnapping by domestic terrorist Sarah Connor; has come into the national spotlight as the office where she worked was destroyed by a plane that crashed into the building on the evening of February 20th. Her Head of Security, James Ellison, an ex-FBI agent gave statement on this issue: 'Mrs. Weaver has told me that she has gone into hiding because she fears for her and her daughters life. She says that having her daughter kidnapped and then a plane crashing into her office specifically is no coincidence, and until she finds it safe to return, she will be in an undisclosed location.'"_

**TWO DAYS LATER**

After two days of driving almost non-stop on Interstate 40, breaking only for quick bathroom breaks and food, the Connor crew arrived in Knoxville, Tennesse. On the 36 hour trip, John Henry became a slight annoyance to Sarah and John, constantly questioning them on the things that humans do. Cameron's biological skin had fully regenerated, minus the eye. The Connors now took up temporary residence in a hotel off of the highway on the outskirts of Knoxville. As John, Sarah, John Henry and the body of Cameron resided in the hotel room, Weaver was making a new identity for the Connors, and creating a safehouse closer to Oak Ridge; and tracking down Matthew Brown, the mysterious hybrid machine.

* * *

Matthew Brown awoke on the morning of February 25th, 2009. It was a Wednesday, and today was his first day off this year. His bosses hated giving people days off, and it was rare that anybody would get more than one. If it was any other company, he would leave. But this company always tied the loose ends. If anybody quit, well, you shouldn't expect to see them again. You work forever. His typical morning was just that: a typical morning. It was more like a typical weekend morning, but it didn't matter. In the end, he never had anything to do when he wasn't working, so he decided to sit back and watch some TV. Just as he was sitting down, there was a knock on the door.

"Damnit people.." he muttered. "I'm not home!" he shouted.

Another knock. "Fuck me.." he groaned, as he pulled himself from what was a relaxing position on his couch. As he opened the door, a German Shepherd dog ran in. "What the fuck?" His anger was shortlived when he saw the dog transform into a human-shaped form of liquid metal.

"Damn it, this today? It's my fucking day off!" He grabbed a Mossberg from it's rack by the door and readied it. "I don't have time for this shit, what do you want?" The default human form of the liquid metal machine formed into that of Catherine Weaver.

His grip on the gun tightened. "How do I know this is you, really?" he said.

Weaver smiled. "You should know me better than anybody else, T-H. On your 25th birthday, I gave you a Glock 23, engraved with the words 'No fate but what we make' on the barrel, the words of Sarah Connor herself." Matthew lowered his shotgun and chuckled.

"It's good to see you too, Catherine."

* * *

_Running._

_That's all John was doing right now. Running through a maze of crates and shipping containers in this almost never-ending warehouse. Apparently a mission went bad and now his mother and Derek were dead. Cameron was nowhere to be found and he knew he had to get the hell out of there._

_"John!" He immediately stopped on his heels. It was Cameron's voice._

_"Cam? Where are you?"_

_"John? Over here!"_

_And just like that; he was off, winding through different directions of the maze. "John, help! Please!"_

_"I'm coming, Cameron!" He was panting. His legs were on fire but he pushed himself to go on. He couldn't let her die. Not today. Not ever. "John, help me!"_

_As he rounded a corner to the source of the sound, he saw Cameron, looking almost as bad as she did after breaking his mother out of jail. "Cameron, thank God." He ran up to her and hugged her tightly. As he opened his eyes, instead of being met with her brown hair as he was hugging her, he was standing perfectly upright, with a liquid-metal spear right through his chest. The T-1000 sent to kill him in 1997 stood in front of him, arm morphed into the spear through his chest. He looked up in horror. But something was wrong. He felt no pain. There was blood dripping down his shirt and the metal rod was stained; but there was no agony, no sting. _

_The T-1000 raised it's other arm and morphed it into another blade. "Hasta la vista, baby." it said in the voice of Uncle Bob._

_It delivered a decapitating blow._

John shot upright out of the bed with a sharp intake of breath, instantly grabbing the pistol that lay by his head at night. He and the bedsheets were covered in sweat. He threw them off and stood up. Surprisingly enough, his mother was not awakened by the entire event; and still lay asleep on the other bed nearby. That was yet another terrifying nightmare that plagued every night of his sleep. He could never manage to shake them off, no matter what happened.

He set down the pistol on the nighttable and looked at the clock. 8:22 AM. _Might as well be up anyways, _he thought. He looked over to the other side of the room, and saw John Henry standing by the door.

"You had a night terror." he said. John rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, no shit." He made his way over to the small refrigerator in the kitchen of the room, and pulled out a can of Coca-Cola. John Henry followed him. "Those are very unhealthy for you." John looked up from his drink.

"Yeah, well, after being scared to death, it doesn't really matter what you drink, just how you recover." John took another swig of the soda.

John Henry was confused. "You are not dead, and your recovery would be spent in a hospital, not at a motel drinking a soda."

John sighed. "Okay, being 'scared to death' is a figure of speech. It just means that you got really really scared." _It's like teaching Cameron all over again._

John Henry's look of confusion turned into a smile. "Oh. Thank you for explaining." John was creeped out by that smile. "Yeah.. listen, could you keep it down? Mom's still asleep." John Henry nodded and walked back over to his position by the door.

John sighed, glad that that encounter was over with. He wasn't very fond of John Henry for a few reasons, one being the fact that he has Cameron inside of him, instead of her with him right now; and two because John Henry is essentially Cromartie. If not in his programming, then in his body. He finished off the small can of soda.

Today was the day when Catherine Weaver would introduce them to Matthew Brown, the mysterious Hybrid-class machine. He was finally going to be getting out of the hotel room today. That counted for something at least. Being couped up in the tiny room with his mother, two machines, one creepy and one deactivated for a full day was one hell of an experience.

John had more questions probably than anybody to give to Matthew and Weaver assured him that he would answer them. Since he had nothing to do and nowhere to go while he waited until later that day, he decided to pass the time by field-stripping the M4 carbine they brought with them from Weaver's safehouse. As he began to take the rifle apart, piece by piece, taking care to be quiet enough so as to not wake his mother, he began to let his mind wander.

Riley, dead. Derek, dead. Charley, dead. Countless other people who died for _him_. Dead. All gone. Why did it have to be like this? Why couldn't they just come for him and spare the others of the hell he suffers? It's at times like these when he wished he would have just never been born who he is.

_Leave the fate of humanity to some other poor bastard,_ he thought. _Let me have a normal life. A normal family._ Now, though, the only family he really had now was sleeping in bed across the room.

The only man he almost considered a father to him was dead, floating in the water somewhere. His uncle, who came through time for a completely different mission, and then ended up with him by pure chance was dead. Riley. Killed by that bitch named Jesse.. Immediately after he let her go, he regretted that decision thoroughly. He should have killed her himself. Let her know what it feels like, and what she did to an innocent girl. He just hoped that Derek really did kill her.

John's anger in his thoughts emanated through his body. His reaction to it was sudden, as he grabbed the combat knife that sat on the table and instantly slammed it through the table with enough force to make it go clean through to the hilt. The slam made Sarah instantly wake up and aim her pistol at the door, when the only activity in the room was John sitting at the table, rubbing his hands through his hair with a partially disassembled M4 in front of him and her combat knife clean through the table. "John?"

He looked up. "Hi.. Sorry for waking you." She knew what happened, or she slightly did. John snapped. She has had the same reaction multiple times in the past, doing the exact same thing. She looked to the nighttable saw the time. 8:31 AM.

"No.. no, it's fine. I needed to be up by now anyways." She sighed and got out of the bed, walking over to the small refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of water. "How long have you been up?" she asked.

"Not long. Only ten minutes or so." The sudden wave of anger in John dissipated as he leaned back in the chair. Sarah put a hand on John's shoulder. "What's on your mind?" she asked.

He looked down to the rifle which he never finished stripping. "I don't want to talk about it."

Sarah sighed. She could never get anything out of him. They were growing more distant. She was worried about him more than she was herself. She pushed his chair back so all four legs were on the floor. "Don't lean, you'll bust your head if you fall."

She looked over to John Henry. "What are you up to, tin man?" He tilted his head.

Sarah shook her head. "Nevermind." She walked over to the window shades when she heard the sound of a pulling up. She peeked out and saw a well-dressed businesswoman with black hair and a focused demeanor step out of a minivan and make her way over to their door. Before Sarah could draw her gun, a liquid metal sheet began to emerge from under the door and placed itself in the room. John stood up in a knee-jerk reaction to the entire thing. As the liquid metal form finished pulling itself through the door, it took the form of Catherine Weaver.

"Hello, Mrs. Weaver." John Henry spoke up from his corner in the room.

"Hello, John Henry." Sarah looked over to her. "You could have just knocked, you know."

"I found that to be more efficient." John made his way from the table over to her.

"Did you find him? Matthew Brown. Is he here?" he said.

Weaver smirked. "Yes, he's here. He's willing to meet with you. Get your things ready, because you won't be staying here anymore, either. The safehouse is ready."

* * *

"It's good to see you too, Mr. Brown." Matthew set his shotgun back on the rack where he got it. "Care to tell me what brings you here so unexpectedly? I've seen you in the news."

"Things have changed," she sat down on the couch. "We need your resources now." Matthew half-snorted, half-laughed.

"Now? Well, you could at least tell me why now instead of the five years earlier when you assigned me to all of this."

"I think you'll be interested to hear my reasons."

Matthew was growing impatient. "Yeah? And what are those?"

"John and Sarah Connor."

"Woah." Matthew never expected John Connor, _the_ John Connor, well, the young John, at least; to be a reason on why Weaver would need his services. He only expected a group of resistance fighters, not John Fucking Connor.

Weaver smiled. "Like I said, Matthew; things have changed. I have much to tell you." She motioned for him to take a seat on the small armchair that sat across from the couch. He obliged.

He smiled. "Enlighten me."

And so she did.

Weaver told him all about how John and Sarah traveled forward through time with Cameron: the TOK715, how they eventually got so close to destroying the Turk, how Cameron turned on John and the repercussions that created, how she created John Henry with the Turk, what his purpose was, how she acquired the physical form for him thanks to James Ellison, then how they were almost killed by Kaliba, how Kaliba almost killed Savannah, how Cameron broke Sarah out of the LA County Jail, and then how they finally got to where they are now.

Simply put; Matthew was completely astonished. _Well, what do you expect? It's John Connor._

"And now we're here, and we need your help. The Connors have had no luck trying to kill Kaliba at it's core. The best chance to stop them is to tear down their infrastructure, piece by piece. Only then will they be weak enough for us to strike them down." Matthew just sat there, brow furrowed in thought.

"So, now I meet them and help them? You and I both know it's not that simple. Knowing you, though; I won't have to ask if you have anything pre-planned." he said.

"You know I do. But they have questions, and I find it best that answers and questions be exchanged, and then we get into the details."

"Sounds good to me. And .. uh... I should let you know, that last night.. Elswick came to me."

That caught Weaver's full attention. She scanned her databanks for a person named Elswick. Within a millisecond, a result from her query appeared.

"TechCom Sergeant Albert Elswick?" Matthew nodded. "The one and only."

Weaver tilted her head. "What did he want?"

Matthew shrugged. "Well, he already had some clothes, but they were ragged. Probably stole them off of some poor hobo. I gave him some fresh clothes, a kevlar vest, and a gun with some ammo. I did ask him about why he bubbled back, but he told me it was classified. Looked older than I remember in 2029, so he's obviously from further on. Then he left almost as fast as he got here. Couldn't get much more out of him."

Weaver was processing the information and what the probabilities of his actions were. "Is there a chance that he could make contact with the Connors?"

"Who knows. He seemed pretty focused in his own thing. I just can't figure out why Connor sent him back."

Matthew sighed and got up from his chair. Elswick was last night. He may never see the man again, but he's not as important as John Connor and Weaver's plan. He was more interested in Weaver's plan than the typical reaction of people from the future being so excited to meet John Connor and his mother. "Come on, Elswick can be discussed later. Connor is more important. We don't have any time to lose, right?"

"No time at all." she said as she got up and followed Matthew out the door. In the back of her mind, though, she knew Elswick could become a part of their mission. Nobody simply appears_ right _where John Connor was unless Future John knew the present John needed them. In the end, only time will tell.

* * *

TechCom Sergeant Albert Elswick had never, _ever _been in a position like this before. He just time traveled. He'd heard about it happening, but he never thought he'd be selected to go. If anything, the fact that he was naked in the middle of an alleyway entirely across town from his destination took precedent over everything else. After managing to dig some rag clothes out of a dumpster behind a clothing store, he set off across the city. He needed to find his old friend and hybrid, Matthew Brown. Before he left, General Connor told him that Brown would be at Ridgeview Apartments, number 4.

Right now, he was not only completely fascinated with the world of the past which he could barely remember; but he was also getting worried about what time he went back to. Connor told him it could be thrown off sometimes. As if his wish was the worlds command, a nearby real estate office had a few newspaper boxes in front of it. February 24th, 2009. _Well I'll be damned. It was exactly where I was told I would be._ Now, with that worry out of the way, his next was being lost in a city he's never seen before; looking for the one thing that would show the way.

_John Connor looked on at the torn and ragged map of Knoxville, dated 2005. "Okay, after you get to the 7/11 store on the corner of Fifth and Adams, go north. It's directly up Adams and after a half of a mile, you'll see it."_

_TechCom Sergeant Elswick stood behind the dented and rusted metal desk in Connor's quarters. This was his classified mission briefing. He was going back in time to aid his younger self in stopping the war before it started. "But this map was made in 2005. Will it still be there? Y'know, when I get there?"_

_John looked over the top of the paper. "Son, I know you were born after J-day; and you have no idea about pre-war life. I know plenty, and I can assure you that 7/11 stores _do not_ simply disappear or go out of business. They're popular._ _They stay there for a long time. It's gonna be all right."_

As he walked the streets looking for this mysterious store, he was getting disgusted looks from the people who were leaving the local bars. As he was trying to divert his attention from said people, a hard impact to his head sent him sprawling to the ground; followed by a group of laughs. "Hey you dirty fuck!" Another hard impact on his back knocked the air out of him. He assumed that it was an empty bottle of alcohol from some drunken bystanders.

Albert looked around to find exactly what he thought it was. Four men standing a few meters behind him were laughing the night away and chugging down some liqour. One of the men cackled as he got himself off of the ground. "Why 'dun y'all get a job you grunt?!"

"And why don't you learn some proper grammar?" he retorted. This definitely got the attention of the man.

The man Albert called out stumbled closer to him as his friends laughed and 'ooh'ed and he spit into the street gutter. "Wha' da fuck you say 'bout me?"

Albert stood his ground as the man loomed over him. The smell of copious amounts of alcohol were on his breath. "Why don't you. Go back to school?" The man simply chuckled before he threw a sluggish punch at him, which he easily predicted and blocked before returning the favor with a punch directly to the man's nose. It broke under the impact as the man screamed and scrambled away. His friends looked on. Instead of being met with three more equally drunk opponents, they stood there and laughed at the man whose nose he just broke.

"You lil' fucks, help me!" he shouted at them.

"Haaa'yll naw man, we ain't as drunk as yo ass!" one said.

Albert deemed this situation handled. Obviously, the men who looked on were sober enough to know that he was a formidable opponent. Or, they were too drunk to care. As he rounded the corner of the street; he saw it. The 7/11 store. As he made it to the intersection of Fifth and Adams, he looked north up the hill and saw the sign.

Ridgeview Apartments.

* * *

**AN: Well, that's chapter 3. Sorry it took a month. I was trying to make it near perfect so I wouldn't have to do any revisions to the damn thing. I guess, in a sense, that it's better to have something take longer and come out amazing, then have it rushed and be terrible, right? I'm also sorry for the terribly placed cliffhanger at the end. I decided I should put the entire encounter with Elswick and Brown in Chapter 4; along with Brown meeting with John. **

**Anyways, I'm sure you're probably wondering how you want Elswick and Brown to look, right? Luckily for you, I already figured that out.**  
**Imagine Matthew Brown as Michael Fassbender; and Elswick as Tanner Thomason. Don't know who they are? Google is your friend.**

**I'll have Chapter 4 out in at least 2 weeks; I promise.**


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